TikTok’s favorite politician takes office

By Editor-in-Chief Padma Balaji

TikTok cannot get enough of Zohran Mamdani. It’s easy to see why: he’s well spoken — extraordinarily so — flashes a bold, charismatic smile, boasts a bright, 70s inspired campaign design that looks great on your For You page, and knows how to make really, really good videos. He’s adopted this casual, friendly-neighborhood-politician campaigning style that you’ll rarely see in official campaign videos. He’s always walking around New York City — grabbing a bite from one of the city’s hundreds of kebab stands, taking the bus, or just talking to regular New Yorkers.

Before Mamdani, it was rare to see a young, average person in politics that seriously knew how to appeal to the youth. It was even rarer to see someone like that win.

The New Guard

Earlier this year, I was riding home on the BART when I noticed this young guy across from me, with glasses and a tech vest, typing away on his laptop. I had this itching feeling that I’d seen him before. Turns out, he was Ashwin Ramaswami, a candidate for the Georgia State Senate who recently moved to the Bay Area to work on his tech startup. 

In fall of 2024, Ramaswami’s posts had dominated my LinkedIn and Instagram pages. He was a young upstart in Georgia trying to unseat an old, white Republican state senator indicted for interfering in the 2020 election in Georgia. Though he lost, he told me in our conversation on the BART that his goal wasn’t necessarily to win, but to try and unseat the “old guard” of politics in Georgia, not just in the Republican party, but in the Democratic party too.

Months later, when I saw Zohran Mamdani — another well-spoken young person running for office — while scrolling on Instagram reels, I felt a hint of déjà vu. Like Ramaswami, Mamdani’s goal was to unseat an old guard of politicians on a progressive, populist campaign. His win in the primary was stunning: a little-known 33-year-old assemblyman running for the most powerful mayoral seat against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a powerful political establishment. It was the first major Democratic win of the Trump administration, and a huge sign that voters were tired of politicians like Cuomo. 

Mamdani overwhelmingly won over young voters in his primary. 79% of voters aged 18-49 ranked Mamdani, though his popularity faltered among older voters and Black voters. He ran an excellent campaign in the primary — with his typical charisma, down-to-earth demeanor, and policies that spoke to working-class voters — but his skyrocketing success is also because of a relatively new player in politics: TikTok. 

His easygoing demeanor, flashy smile, and stellar video editing style has amassed him tens of millions of views on social media and thousands of adoring fans. It’s hard to find a comment section on his feed that doesn’t have dozens of people proclaiming, “That’s my mayor!” despite not living anywhere near New York. He was so resoundingly successful online that when Cuomo was asked about his loss in the primary, he said, “I think the assemblyman did a better job on TikTok.” 

What Youth Want

But Mamdani’s success on social media is much more than a few viral videos. As young people face rising costs, minimal wage growth, and debt, they’ve grown increasingly disillusioned with the political establishment. Less than two in 10 of youth aged 18 to 29 trusted the federal government to do the right thing, according to a 2025 Harvard Youth Poll. At the same time, a Pew Research Poll found that almost half of TikTok users under 30 use the app to keep up with politics.

At a time when young people, along with the rest of the country, are increasingly facing the burden of rising costs, Mamdani spoke to them on an app they regularly use and trust, with a platform that spoke directly to their concerns. He leaned into social media in a way that made him feel uniquely authentic and down-to-earth, like someone you could grab a coffee with or walk by on your way to work. He was someone that influencers — often sporting a shirt that read “Hot Girls for Zohran” — loved to endorse. 

For young people like me, Mamdani’s campaign felt revolutionary — not because of his policies — but because he actually seems to represent us. His campaign’s success, largely bolstered by young people, showed disillusioned Gen-Zers that their vote could translate into real change. And it showed the rest of the world of the tangible power young people could have, not only in New York, but in shaping liberal politics as a whole.

A Progressive Wave

Across the country, dozens of young, progressive candidates have followed in Mamdani’s footsteps, building campaigns that speak to young people. Over the Hudson River in Jersey City, 28-year-old Pakistani American Mussab Ali ran for mayor against a disgraced former governor. His Instagram page is filled with viral videos with catchy hooks and the occasional brainrotted meme. “Hey! It’s me, Black Zohran Mamdani,” Ali said in an Instagram video with 1.1 million views. Other progressive candidates have similarly racked up hundreds of thousands of views on their videos. In San Francisco, Saikat Chakrabarti, former chief of staff for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, announced his run for Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat. He positioned himself as a progressive disrupter against a politician — and party — that was too old and moderate to stand up to Trump. In Illinois, Palestinian American journalist and activist Kat Abughazaleh is running for a congressional seat with a mission to help working voters and fight authoritarianism.

Mamdani’s win has emboldened a wave of new progressive leaders with a shared mission of taking down a Democratic political establishment that has sat idle while Trump has been in office. They champion working class voters — a group the Democrats lost to Republicans in 2024 — and campaign on kitchen-table issues like the cost of living. They’re staunchly progressive, but perhaps that’s not as scary to liberal voters as moderate Democrats like Chuck Schumer, who refused to endorse Mamdani until a few days before his campaign, initially thought. 

Since their loss last November, the Democratic Party has been scrambling to fix its fatal messaging problem. Their campaign failed to resonate with young, working-class voters. Trump won largely because he spoke on kitchen-table issues — the price of eggs, high rent, and the job market. But a year into the administration, as voters are reeling from the cost of tariffs, struggling to justify the brutality of nationwide ICE raids, and confronted with the president’s ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Trump is quickly losing ground among his supporters. 

 These new politicians — young and zealous, unabashedly championing the working-class, and fighting a political status quo voters are tired of — could be the solution to the Democratic Party’s woes. But social media, which has propelled many of these candidates into the spotlight, cannot alone revolutionize the Democratic Party, much less American politics as a whole. So next month, when TikTok’s favorite politician gets sworn into office, and America looks to Mamdani as a test case for what the new Democratic Party could be, let’s hope he succeeds.